The loss of self and co-dependency unraveling us as individuals in the face of attrition and calamity and longing; the paradoxical yearning for closeness and distance in youth of belonging and being an individual in the face of oppressive societal norms. Signalis is an incredibly ambitious psychological horror game taking obvious cues from predecessors such as Team Silent and classic Resident Evil game design, but is a disservice to simply dismiss it as nothing more. It sits in the rare territory of motivated game design down to a 'T'; puzzles, combat, inventory, down to its items reiterate and hone back to its themes successfully, never letting me forget what the game is communicating to its audience.

Its blend of heavily tailored symbolic motifs and nods to cinematic giants ala Solaris, High-Life, The Shining and Persona to cosmic horror classics as the King In Yellow, it does an immaculate job filtering these influences into more than pastiche, and into a nuanced depiction of psychological breakdown and bond between two people hanging on to blind love and hopeless faith.

The amalgamation of genres from cyberpunk, psychological and body horror as well as fascistic dystopic sci-fi somehow work in tandem and feed off of one another perfectly in Signalis. Each piece jumping back and forth to individuality and our bodily relation to either abstract concepts as the state or to literal tribalistic mentalities humans succumb to, albeit big or small.

Signalis regularly poses the theme of extreme conformity from an oppressive totalitarian regime to the immense isolation when trying to navigate and maintain the self and identity. Both at ends and as people strive to balance one over the other, our hive-mind tendency invariably leads us in ways to an inevitable conforming; whether to the bonds we share with people, interests, love, etc. We are extremes in ourselves and border on insanity when either/or are met to the ends of pulling us at the arms and breaking apart an integral piece in ourselves: choice, malleability, and acceptance.

I was surprised to have actually cried a few minutes after the game ended, the sobering feeling from processing what just unraveled. It's a game that I've been waiting for for some time from demos to the end product. Seeing it now finished and fully realized in its scope, it surpassed any expectation I have. Not since Silent Hill 2 have I felt inner turmoil in a video game pointing back a mirror at myself in a sincere way, and from it, deep appreciation. Like any good narrative and literary work, it allows the audience to piece together the pieces without forcing cryptic language for the sake of cryptic language. It's a devastating piece of art, and will haunt me for days, weeks, months, however long my mind has to dwell on the honest and earnest depiction of the self it begs us to question.